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The Tomatometer rating – based on the published opinions of hundreds of film and television critics – is a trusted measurement of movie and TV programming quality for millions of moviegoers. It represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show.

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Fresh

The Tomatometer is 60% or higher.

Rotten

The Tomatometer is 59% or lower.

Certified Fresh

Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics.

One can see where the story might be of great interest to fans and devotees of Chanel, but for casual viewers who have never seen her as more than the face behind an empire, there's too little in this movie to provide more than a casual diversion.

You know they're out of ideas when all Tautou does is walk and look around, then walk and look around some more. It's as if she's window-shopping for another movie. The one she's in isn't terrible. But it's not interesting, either.

Tautou not only resembles Chanel, she inhabits the role completely, using flashing eyes and a relentless intelligence to convey the unbending strength of a woman determined to make something of her life in a time and place when that was far from the norm.

Headstrong women might have been hard to find in turn-of-the-century Europe, but heroines like Tautou's are a dime a dozen in costume dramas, and there isn't enough material detailing what makes her Chanel a special case.

Coco Before Chanel examines the influences that made Chanel so different - and so irreplaceable - the way an observant fashion student might deconstruct an haute couture garment to understand how it's built.

I missed the desperation that goaded the real Coco-not just the sulks that pass like rain showers across Tautou's prettiness but that brisk contempt for existing conditions which led Chanel, like any French revolutionary, to overturn them.